Visitors Voice Opinions on Sewer, Salaries, Librarians at KC Board Meeting

By Christopher Miller

BALD EAGLE TOWNSHIP – Three visitors voiced their opinions to the Keystone Central School Board at Thursday’s Voting Meeting.

Mill Hall Borough Council President Anthony “Tony” Walker voiced his concerns regarding the sanitary sewer system that serves Central Mountain Middle School and Mill Hall Elementary, saying that the system has seen “more issues with paper towels and other items” entering the sewer system causing clogs along the lines.

“I have pictures I can share with the secretary to send around to the board,” Walker said. “It is causing difficulty along the lines and one way or another we need to come to a conclusion so it doesn’t occur like last year when someone along Cedar Lane had the sewer back up into their finished basement.”

Walker mentioned that it comes with additional costs for clean up. He mentioned wishing to sit down with the school board to find a resolution.

“This is one of the only times I have had to appear here, and I don’t want to come back,” he said jokingly.

District resident Manuel Rodriguez spoke with board members via Zoom.

“I have questions for you regarding resource officer salaries going up, wondering why you are doing this with the deficit and trying to pay things off,” Rodriguez said. “It is my understanding that the more we spend, it reflects back on the people in the form of higher taxes.

He also spoke on the proposed pay increase for the officers, saying “is there any way we can save that money and use it somewhere else, there are lots being cut but raising salaries right now doesn’t seem fair.”

Lastly, the school board heard from Christina Onuskanich, regarding the elimination and relocation of librarian positions across the district.

“It was brought to my attention that we are cutting our librarians and moving from four to one district-wide,” Onuskanich said. “I have two daughters who love the library and who have been inspired by librarians, I find this to be a devastating thing we are doing in the district.”

“You talk about having paraprofessionals in place of a librarian where students will have extra time to work on a computer but it is not what they want, what’s best for them, or what they need. We need a person certified as a librarian with the education to teach what the students want to know and how to conduct research.”

A discussion among school board members ensued after Onuskanich’s impassioned plea to the board for the librarians’ cause.

“The reason I needed to make this decision was because we need to reduce the number of positions in the district and there is nothing we can do to remove positions that won’t affect students. If there was a way to preserve librarians I would love to do that, but this happened to be the first in the line of things for us to look at with other changes in the coming months.”

The plan, according to Superintendent Dr. Francis Redmon, is to move the librarians into other positions within the district, with one official librarian to oversee the district.

“There will be some library electives being taught in the middle school, that person will be teaching those and coordinating the book weeding reports and other functions that have to happen in each library over the year,” Dr. Redmon said.

School board member Butch Knauff spoke about his personal experience with the library, possessing library card number three when the Renovo Public Library was a brand new entity in Renovo in 1968.

“My life growing up was reading,” Butch said. “I experienced traveling through reading and I do not need a physical book in hand when I have my tablet, I usually have at least two books open at a time and my wife likes the physical books, we are constantly reading. I think I am more 21st century and she is old school, I do not believe kids check out books nowadays and they get things online. But I would have to go along with keeping the librarians. I know we have to make cuts and the funding is not there to have the staff we would love to see.”

The paraeducator in place of librarians in the schools, according to Dr. Redmon, will be able model how things are done, but the core teaching will have to come from the certified classroom teacher.

Board member Dr. Bill Baldino originally thought that, “I seriously thought there was not much need for a librarian anymore with the younger kids, I thought a librarian is most useful when doing tough research to find sources for research but I was wrong: it sounds like is something that people are contributing significantly to a kids education. I think we should revisit this.”

Bill also brought up several studies he had read about memory retention and cognition being, “better with the printed word than the digital word.”

“There is a place for the books on a shelf and a place for a person to help kids find them,” Dr. Baldino said.

Board member Elisabeth Lynch brought up a recent conversation regarding an AI policy and introducing AI classes at the CTE level.

“I wish we had the chance to explore the AI and the CTE program classes and to blend these in with the library,” she said. “I am hopeful that a discussion can start where we can talk about Ai and the possibility of it being included in our CTE classes.”

Lynch also brought up the avenue of looking into a partnership with the Ross Library, and then asking to table this for further discussion.